Full of Grace

by Misty Provencher

  “It’s not like it’s hard to do,” I say. “You’re gorgeous. You’re carrying my baby. Those things get my attention.”

  “And what if one of them was missing?” A shaky hand smoothes down over her belly. Oh. It’s the fat problem. My sisters were always concerned about every ounce, even though I could never see the difference between their ‘thin’ times or their ‘fat’ times. Sometimes they got a little curvier, but girls are supposed to be curvy.

  “If you were a toad stool, we probably wouldn’t be here to begin with.” I laugh. “But if you mean how you’ll change with a baby? I think pregnancy makes girls even more irresistible.”

  “So you have a thing for fat girls.”

  “I have a thing for girls,” I say. “And if you’re a pregnant girl, you’re off to a real good start, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “But if…” she begins and I step closer. My front, touching her back, silences her.

  “I’m just saying, Sher…it’s harder for me not to be into you. The more you’re around, the more I want you to be. You’re a potato chip. The more I have, the more I want.” That’s the truth. I might not know who this girl is, but I want to. I want more of that feeling she gave me, when she came into the room after we’d been apart. She settles everything in my head back into place, just by being here. Whatever that is, I want it.

  I move in even closer, so her back is firmly pressed to me. A mix of perfumes rises off her and I want other things now too. I’m sure she can feel it, but she’s tense as guitar strings. I’m breathing hard enough that strands of her hair flutter off her shoulder.

  She gives me a tight rope giggle, but then her rear flinches against me and I have to close my mouth on the groan. When I finally speak, even my voice is deep and grinding.

  “Sher, how do you feel about me?”

  Her hands fall to her sides, grazing my thighs. It seems like an invitation. But then she giggles and it’s a little like metal shavings, because it’s not an answer, but I press my hips gently into the soft curves of her back end. She returns the push, gently, maybe even a little hesitant. I slide my fingers over her biceps and pause, giving her another chance, in case she wants to tell me to stop. She doesn’t. Her head tilts back, laying against my shoulder, and her hands each slide down my thighs.

  “You like that?” I ask, rubbing against her again.

  “Yes,” she giggles. I don’t care about the giggle. I don’t care if she does it the whole time I’m pressed against her. I’m standing on end, quivering to get closer, to get inside her, any way I can. I slide my hands over her breasts and give them a little squeeze. She flinches, knocking into me hard enough that I grunt.

  She yanks my hands away. “You can’t palm them like basketballs, you sasquatch! They’re sore!”

  “Sorry. You feel so good, I lost my head for a second.”

  “You squeeze them like that again, and you’ll lose all your heads. And I mean permanently,” she growls, and the funny thing is that all her hissing doesn’t even take the edge of my mood. I kiss her neck instead, until her head lolls against my shoulder again. Then, I ease down, over her stomach and toward the waist of her pants.

  Her stomach is flat, but under my palms, I detect the tiniest little pot that she’s got secreted away beneath her zipper. Her skin is exactly the way I remember it, softer than rabbit fur. I flatten my hand and follow the natural curves of her, down past the edge of her panties. Finally, I reach what I am looking for, and stroke the lips of her sex with two fingers. Her hair tickles my face as she arches her back, pushing herself into my palm. I want to taste what makes her so warm and touch her silkiness with every part of my body.

  I slide one finger inside her, watching from over her shoulder. She’s breathing as hard as I am, her nipples rising up to strain against her shirt. She brings one arm up and wraps it around the back of my neck, while the other grips my thigh as she grinds against my hardness.

  “I want you,” I murmur in her ear, “in my bed.”

  Only one scene loops on the big screen in my head. It’s the moment I get to unwrap her and admire every inch of her body, all at once. I want to make her moan as she wraps her legs around me.

  But I also want to savor everything this time. I want to show her how to relax into it, so she knows how good I can make her feel. I want to have her begging for my touch. Eventually, I want to unleash her, so she sinks her teeth into my shoulder as I melt into her.

  I want to do all of it with her, over and over again, right now.

  She turns, her lips catching mine in a deep kiss that surprises me. It’s bold and passionate and as ready as I am. There’s no way we’re going to make it to my room.

  I grip the edge of her shirt as I kiss her, easing it up slowly, in case she wants to stop.

  Please, God, don’t make her want to stop.

  She doesn’t. I pull away from her, only long enough to twist her around and get her shirt over her head, and then my mouth is on hers again. Facing me this time, she opens her lips and her sweet strawberry tongue tangles with mine. She walks backward, never breaking our kiss and dragging me along, like a dog after a bone.

  Her legs bump the edge of my mattress, but we remain standing, her tongue sliding over mine. I remind myself to take my time, to slow it down, to let her enjoy it.

  Damn. This might be one of the most disciplined things I’ve ever had to do.

  I am extra gentle as I slide off her bra, sliding one hand down to cup her breast, while keeping the other at her back, holding her to me. Her breasts are heavier, rounder than before. Maybe even more perfect than I remember them.

  Trailing kisses to her nipple, her head falls back and her hair dances between her shoulder blades, tickling my fingers. I breathe over her smooth flesh and she arches her back, delivering her nipple right to my lips. I slide my tongue over the pebble and Sher takes hold of my hair with both hands.

  Yes.

  “Lay down,” I murmur. She sits down on my mattress, scooting backward across it a little as I drop to my knees. I hook my fingers in her pants and slide them down her legs, along with her panties.

  She giggles as I spread her legs apart. I wonder how many noises I can get out of her as I lower my head between her knees. The second my breath warms against her, she jumps, so I weave my arms around her thighs and hold her still.

  I lower my head to her again, this time, tracing her with my tongue. Her moans break from her, long and deep, as if she’s being dragged out to sea on an ocean wave.

  “Here?” I ask and the pressure of my tongue coaxes another moan from her. I ease one finger through her slick folds and she arches off the bed. I’m going to explode.

  I stand. Her heels rest on the edge of the bed and her knees sway to the side, hiding what I want. I grip one knee and separate her legs, spreading them back apart like butterfly wings.

  “Right there,” I whisper as I slip out of my pants. In the evening sun that filters in, she blushes and tries to pull up one knee, but I put my palm on her thigh and hold it down.

  “Don’t,” I say. “I want to see you.”

  Her blush deepens, but she doesn’t resist me. Free of my clothes, I pull her toward me, aligning her with my hips. Her eyes are wide open, the edge of her lip clamped in her teeth. I stroke her thigh.

  “I’ll be careful,” I tell her. She releases her lip.

  I lean forward, tracing her jaw with my fingertips, until she relaxes. I slide my fingers into her mouth.

  “Suck on them. I want them wet,” I whisper. She does what I tell her and when my fingers are dripping, I take them from her mouth and rub them along my length, making it slick. She tilts her pelvis, wanting. Our eyes lock as I guide myself into her.

  I see the way her eyes widen a little as I enter her. I move more slowly, our gaze unwavering. I don’t have to ask her how it feels. When her eyes close and her body arcs off the bed, I answer with an appreciative groan.

  Then she takes over. She reaches over the edge of
the bed to grip my thighs, pulling me closer, demanding more. Her eyes open up and her brow dips in frustration. She doesn’t want me to go easy, but I want to make this last. And then she releases me altogether, scooting back on the bed. I nearly dive for her ankle, to drag her back to me, but once she reaches the center of the sheets, she spreads her legs wide and gives me a slow, teasing grin.

  I lift one brow. Oh, I don’t think so.

  I am on her before she can inhale. I push her onto her back and spread her legs wide as I thrust myself deep into her. Our eyes remain locked. My hands are in her hair and her nails dig into my shoulders. Her body grips me as I bury my length. She winces and I freeze.

  “Please,” she begs, pulling my mouth to hers. Her tongue glides in and she swallows the sound from my throat. She releases my lips and her hips spike. I don’t hold back. I plunge so deeply into her this time that our moans meet in the air, twisting into one.

  For one second, the world freezes. There is only Sher staring into my eyes. Me, staring back. Our connection is beyond physical, it’s even more than the link of a baby growing in her belly. It’s my soul and hers, grazing fingertips over one another.

  She throws back her head, pulling her gaze from mine, as the final moan courses through her in waves. I can’t take it. I pulse into her, letting the wave take me along too.

  Even when the very last spasm passes, neither of us moves.

  ***

  “What was that?” Sher finally asks. I am still trying to catch my breath.

  “You tell me.”

  “All I said was that you liked fat girls and blam…”

  “I wasn’t lying when I told you they make me hot. Pregnant girls especially.”

  “I guess you weren’t kidding.”

  “So,” I trace along the ceiling for something to look at. “Are you thinking of maintaining your current hotness?”

  She quirks an eyebrow. “Maintaining?”

  “You know. If you want to do it right, it will take the full nine months to reach the maximum level of hotness.”

  I glance at her from the corner of my eye. She’s fingering my wristwatch. She slides it back and forth, a quarter inch to the left, over my wrist bone, and back again.

  “I’m thinking about it,” she says, but her grin disappears with the shortest giggle I’ve ever heard out of her. I roll onto my side, drifting a fingertip from the upside-down horseshoe in her collar bone, down between her breasts, all the way to her stomach. I spread my fingers over her belly.

  “You don’t have to be scared,” I say. “I’ll be with you. I’m not going anywhere. No matter what happens.”

  Another giggle hides behind a magically disappearing grin.

  “I promise, Sher. No matter what, I’ll be here for you.” I pull her chin, so her eyes meet mine.

  “Okay,” she says softly. Her eyes are wide, unblinking, a little freaked out. My heart escalates a beat.

  “Okay?” I prop up on an elbow. “Does that mean what I think it does?”

  She nods slowly. “No matter what, for nine months. That’s the deal.”

  I don’t ask what will happen after the nine months. If she’s thinking she’ll leave the baby with me, if we work things out, or if she’ll consider what just occurred while we were staring into each other’s eyes…I don’t ask for any more than what she’s offering at this moment. I won’t litter the hope of our futures.

  “Excellent.” I smile as I capture her lips and pull her on top of me. She slides her knees down on either side of my hips with a giggle. I instantly swell between her legs.

  “Are you serious? Again?”

  I laugh. “It’s not my fault you’re so fat…I mean, hot.”

  I catch her fist before it bashes into my nose, and pull her into a feisty kiss instead.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I STAY IN MY BED WITH THE INTENTION of going to sleep beside her. She curls up on the opposite edge of the mattress, and it takes three hours before her breathing finally evens out and she goes to sleep. If that doesn’t say she’s terrified, nothing does.

  But, in the morning, I give Sher back her pants, her phone, and her purse.

  “Awww,” she says, when I bring her stuff in from my trunk and dump her filled gym bag on the floor beside the bed. I’m still relieved when she doesn’t jump for her pants. Instead, she hangs over the side and slips her hand through the open zipper, taking a lazy inventory of what’s inside. “I missed my stuff.”

  “It’s all yours.”

  “You know, the world is better with pants,” she says. The sheet outlines her body and I trace the dips and hollows with my eyes. And I wish to God I’d bought thinner bedding. Then she moves, and the sheet tightens across her chest. I’m paralyzed, wanting to see more.

  “Jeez, do you always look like a creepy stalker in the morning?” She grips the sheet and leans further over the edge of the bed. A second later, she’s retrieved her phone and puts it to her ear. She pivots it away from her mouth to say, “Do you mind giving me a minute? I want to talk to Hale…about private things.”

  “No problem,” I say, but I don’t want to leave. Aside from hearing her tell Hale that we’re going to be parents, I mostly want to climb back into the bed, knock the phone out of her hands, and strip back the sheet.

  “Why don’t you make us some pancakes or something?”

  “Pancakes?”

  “I’d love that. Maybe I won’t throw up this time.”

  “That’d be great, but…” I stop when she lifts a brow. All the sexy is gone and I get the cue loud and clear that I better get my ass out in the kitchen and start whipping up some flapjacks. “I’d have no idea how to work a stove.”

  Sher looks away with a grin as she slides the phone back up to her mouth. “Hale Storm! Gimme a second…” She looks back at me, the grin fading a little. “Are you being serious?”

  “No.”

  “Then get to it! Oh my God, aren’t you starving? I am!” She giggles wildly, pointing toward the kitchen. I laugh as I back out of the room, but I leave the door open, so I can listen to the big baby announcement. Unfortunately, Sher’s tone drops, and it’s impossible to get out a mixing bowl without banging them and losing everything Sher’s saying.

  I stand at the edge of the kitchen counter, craned toward the bedroom, as I dump half a box of cake mix into the bowl and the other half onto the floor. I don’t have pancake mix, but I figure yellow cake will pass for pancakes just fine. When the sheets rustle, I grab a spoon and stir the dry mix, in case I get caught listening.

  “You there?” Sher whispers in the bedroom. “Yeah, I’m still at Landon’s…weeeeell, I told him we should have it…be happy for me…No, I didn’t talk to him about it yet…because…don’t be mad at me. I shouldn’t have said anything…Just be my best friend right now, not my mom, okay?…I will tell him…yes, I will. Just not right now…”

  Sher moves toward the bedroom door. I realize my eyebrows are stuck so high up on my brow that I might have to dig them out of my hair. I force them down as I scoot away from the bedroom door and around the kitchen island, the spilled cake mix sticking to my feet.

  Sher closes the door. Dammit.

  I try to blow it off and just read the instructions on the cake box, but there aren’t instructions for how to make fucking pancakes out of yellow cake. And I can’t get my head off of what she said to Hale. She has to tell me something and it sounds serious. Worst of all, I can’t imagine what it is. But I do know that whatever it is, Hale already knows. I chuck the damn cake box in the trash and pour some milk in the bowl. It should work. I stir the resulting clumpy goop, inching my way back to the edge of the kitchen that is closest to the bedroom door.

  I can’t hear a damn thing.

  But then the door swings back open and Sher walks out. She comes around the corner, into the kitchen, and slides on the cake mix with a yelp. I drop the bowl and grab her before she goes down. Cake goop sloshes all over the floor.

  “Are you okay?
” I ask as she gets her balance back.

  “Yeah. What’s all over the floor?”

  “I spilled the mix,” I tell her. She lifts the spoon from what is left in the goop bowl.

  “That doesn’t look like pancakes.”

  “I told you I have no idea what I’m doing. How about we go out for pancakes?”

  “Look, Landon,” she says. “You don’t have to spend every spare second with me. I’m not going to sneak off to the clinic.”

  I rub my upper lip.

  “I’m not worried about that,” I tell her, even though it has crossed my mind about eight thousand times. What I don’t say is that I’m worried about what she still hasn’t told me. And I’m worried that whatever it is might stop me from feeling like I do when she’s around.

  “You also have to start saving your money,” she lectures, planting her hand on her hip. “For diapers and stuff. Kids aren’t cheap, you know. Let’s just eat here. I’ll make the pancakes.”

  “I’m out of mix.”

  “You don’t need a mix,” she scoffs. “It’s just pancakes.”

  “It’d be easier to go out. One breakfast won’t break me,” I tell her but she shakes her head, leaning a hip on the counter.

  “If I’m going to stay here, I can’t pay, but I can cook.” She puts two fingers over her mouth to suppress a sudden, tiny gag. “Well, maybe, on the cooking. But I can clean for sure and this place needs it. I’ll keep the place clean for you.”

  “Sounds like a good deal,” I say.

  “Hardly. You’re paying for everything.”

  “But you’re doing all the heavy lifting.” I smile, putting a hand on her stomach. She pulls my hand away with a shake of her head.

  “Just so you know, what happened last night…” She drops my hand, bending down to pick up the pancake bowl, instead of looking at me. “I shouldn’t have done that.”